How to make a Summer Beach Bag courtesy of Elizabeth Galloway Academy of Fashion

07 Nov 2011, Posted by Cape Town Girl in DIY, Design, fashion, field guides, girl stuff, south africa, weekend in pictures, 0 Comments

Attention aspiring fashionistas. I spent Saturday afternoon at the Elizabeth Galloway Academy of Fashion Design (like SA’s version of Central St Martins) where we were taught how to make a summer bag. I had lovely (and very very patient ) miss Mieke helping me because it’s a lot harder than it looks this whole ‘creating fashion from scratch’ thing.

I made most of the rookie errors – going so fast my thread came out the machine, skew stiching that had to be unpicked, messy pinning, reckless overlocking – you name it, I messed it up. But somehow the pile of fabric materialised into a gorgeous summer bag in the end, which I’ll definitely be using on the beach! Below: the ‘before’ picture – believe it or not this will become a handbag

A whole lot of this before anything becomes real. That navy ribbon is vintage, by the way ;)

Some more finishings and embellishments

And then voila! We have ourselves a gorgeous beach bag. Country WHO???? ;)

If this looks like the sort of thing you’d enjoy doing full time, you should look into doing one of their courses. They do Part Time Short Courses as well as a full Diploma in Fashion Design that takes 3 years. And if you don’t really want to become a designer but would rather work in and around the field of fashion, then this is the place to come – they teach you all about the adjacent industries too (buying, styling, fashion writing, business). A big thanks to Derek and the lovely ladies for all your help and for a lovely afternoon out in Stellenbosch. Click here to go to the Elizabeth Galloway website.

Name Your Hood

22 Jun 2011, Posted by Cape Town Girl in CTG, bloggers, cape town, cool websites, field guides, lifestyle, south africa, 1 Comments

Have you heard about Name Your Hood? It’s this very cool initiative where we, as Capetonians, get to give your favourite areas cool names. For example take New York’s Tribeca - which comes from Triangle Below Canal street. Or Soho, The Bronx... there’s loads of examples. Just watch this neat little video to find out a bit more about how those names came to be and how it works. Now we can differentiate between the various little areas within the city instead of saying vaguely ‘city bowl’, etc.

Name Your Hood Cape Town launches officially on the 30th June, and from 4th July you will be able to submit your names. Click here to find out how to do it. Awesome, right?

Spa Saturday at Reyjeane: Lindt pedicures, head massages and Essie micro-dermabrasion manicures

23 Nov 2010, Posted by Cape Town Girl in CTG, CTG recommends, beauty products, cape town, field guides, girl stuff, hair, lifestyle, spa saturdays, things to do, weekends, 4 Comments

Proudly displaying french manicure with salon owner Rey

I tried out Reyjeane Spa & Salon in the Hudson round the corner from Cape Quarter on Saturday. I went for three treatments:

1. A Lindt Deluxe Chocolate Pedicure

2. An Essie Anti-Ageing and E-Juvenate Manicure

3. The Kerastase Aqua Oleum Moisture Treatment

The prices of which can all be found here. Very reasonable. Anyway Reyjeane, if you haven’t been, is a spa and salon that reminds me of a princess’s dressing rooms. The decor is beautiful and pretty and opulent – think armoires and chaise longues. I think it’s a great place to book, say, four of your friends in and go get your hair and nails done before a special event or a big night out, because you can all chat to each other and enjoy the champagne and Lindt choccies and the cupcakes and the cappuccinos that you are served while you get pampered.

Reyjeane - serene and chilled

Lindt Chocolate foot masque - unreal how delicious it smells. This was preceded by a foot massage. Lots of happiness going on here.

Macarons while you have your hair done?

Or perhaps some chocolate?

No? Fancy a cupcake then?

Now I went into Reyjeane with a knot the size of a child’s first in my hair. This happens sometimes - between the blur of charity balls and social soirees and hairspray and teasing sessions that is my life – I sometimes forget to ‘brush it out’ and then it gets worse and worse and eventually I actually cannot brush it out on my own. Enter the lovely ladies at Reyjeane, who used something called a ‘Tangle Teezer’ to get it out. What is a ‘Tangle Teezer’, you ask? It is a gift from god. Please. Try it and see.

Chilled salon times

After the knot was gone my hair was soaked in the Kerastase Aqua Oleum to help revive it to something resembling healthy hair. This treatment came with a head massage, and while it soaked in my hair I got a shoulder and neck massage, too. I struggle to communicate the awesomeness of this series of treatments. Head massage. Neck massage. Soft, silky hair. You do the beauty maths. It adds up to 7 000%.

The ‘Essie Anti-Ageing E-Juvenate‘ treatment is unlike any mani I have ever had before. It uses micro-dermabrasion (just process that for a second) to renew the skin on your hands, and then smother your hands in a vanilla-delicious Essie intensive recovery cream. It’s crazy – you can see the difference between the skin on your hands and your arm immediately. I was like, ‘can we do that on the rest of my body?’

I opted for a classic French Manicure on my hands, and blood red on my toes. I’ve never actually had a French Manicure. I always ‘go hardcore’ and get short red or closest-shade-to-black-that-is-not-black nails. Felt very grown up.

Frenchie.

Can I show you a picture of champagne and chocolate again? Yes? Great!!!

Basil – Reyjeane’s hair stylist – blowdried my hair into softly curled perfection. I flounced around the rest of the day annoying my friends with questions like, ‘don’t you just LOVE these soft curls? I clean up well, right? How pretty am I? Don’t you think Prince William should have proposed to ME?” etc.

I literally left a new woman. New hair. New feet, new neck, new hands. Reyjeane can be found at the Hudson building (same building as Origin Coffee and The Loading Bay – you MUST try their sandwiches if you haven’t yet) in Hudson Street in the Cape Quarter. Click here to see their prices - they really do have great pricing girls – seriously. And the ladies who work there are not only great at what they do but also very very sweet and kind and lovely.

To make a booking call 021 418 0391. Tell ‘em you want the Lindt Chocolate Pedi. You won’t look back, I promise!

CTG starts ‘learning the markets’, bakers rejoice

02 Nov 2010, Posted by Cape Town Girl in CTG, CTG recommends, bloggers, cape town, field guides, lifestyle, money money money, sponsors, 15 Comments

So I’m learning to buy and sell (at a profit) shares on the stock market through GlobalTrader, a company who enables you to trade on behalf of yourself, online. Being a complete novice to this world, they sent a very patient broker by the name of Mark through who gave me a crash course in trading. I wrote some notes. Let me refer to them.

Wish he was riding a bull so could make a pun about 'owning the bull markets', or something.

Firstly, he explained what kind of stock I’d be trading. I’ll be trading CFDs (Contract For Difference) which basically allows me to trade with more money that I have already invested. For example, I’m starting off with R10 000, but a CFD will allow me to trade to the value of R20 000, and the difference will be loaned to me by Globaltrader. Great if you know what you’re doing but don’t have too much money to play with.

GlobalTrader makes the whole system very easy, because you just download an app that sits on your desktop and you watch your shares throughout the day. If you decide you want to buy or sell, you can do it right there on the app, instead of calling your broker. You can call him too, which I sometimes like to do, just because Mark is nice to chat to.

In my crash course I learnt this: there are 3 things you can do when trading: Buy, Sell, or do nothing, and sometimes, doing nothing is better than both buying or selling. So really, ‘trading is like a metaphor for life’.

When choosing which shares to buy, there are 2 ways of doing it: 1) you can look at the charts or 2) you can do some fundamental research into the background of the company. You should probably do a bit of both, but I quite like the second, because I like understanding how business impacts people and rides trends and shizz. For eg, I happen to know that despite the fact that never have we been more educated about the dangers of smoking, never have we been heavier smokers (hardcore!) and that fascinates me, and even though it saddens me, I might just invest in British American Tobacco, because never have cigarettes been this expensive! What a crazy intense mind-puzzle of a socio-economic party!

Anyway every morning I’ll be checking in with GlobalTrader and we’ll be ‘discussing how my CFDs are doing’, and they will help me make buying and selling decisions until I feel confident enough to do it on my own. So watch this space – I’ll be letting you know how it goes. My next step would be to decide where I’m going to buy. I’m thinking fashion, technology and financial institutions would be my first port of call. Oh, and MTN, because they are a progressive company that invests in bloggers.

Yes people – this is my turn to GIVE BACK to the corporations that have nurtured me so well. Excited! Click here to read more about how I’ll be working with GlobalTrader as part of their What’s Stopping You campaign.

helping you help him help you: Carpentry Basics

18 Oct 2010, Posted by Cape Town Girl in CTG recommends, DIY, dating, field guides, guys stuff, sex, 3 Comments

There’s a lot of blurry edges these days when it comes to gender roles. Nobody knows what’s going on and nobody really wants to ask questions. Questions like, ‘Should he pay for dinner, or should you pay for dinner, or should you split it?’ and ‘Do you pay for groceries and he buys the washing machine’ and ‘Is the relationship doomed if he has a BlackBerry and you have an iPhone’ and ‘Will your relationship fail if your respective skincare regimes are counter-complimentary?’ and ‘Is he really flirting with that skank if he doesn’t hide his comment on her photo in his news feed?’ and ‘Is it really necessary to wait til the 10th date to sleep with him when you want it just as bad and to be honest you don’t know if it’s going anywhere because it’s only been 2 months and that’s barely long enough to establish our surnames so let’s just sleep together now so we at least get some sex out of this before we know for sure it won’t work?’

Thankfully, I am not here to address any of these questions, but I am here to point out that there is something thuper theksy about men who fix stuff, and to help you help him to help you by showing you this nifty site which covers The Basics of Carpentry and Construction, so that if any male (friend, family, lover, gay man) happens upon your home and trips on your sideboard that has come loose, you can say ‘Can’t you do something about that quick?’ and he says ‘I’m really not great with my hands (because I am more of an intellectual / I am lazy / I am gay)’, you can whip out your iPhone and open up this bookmark and say ‘You don’t have to be good with your hands, we have the internet, and each other!’

Failing that, you can just bookmark this guide with intent to use it yourself later to ‘put in some shelves’ or to ‘build a birdhouse’, and then just never get round to it.

Whatever suits you.

RTD Festival Fashion: what people wore

11 Oct 2010, Posted by Cape Town Girl in Design, Parties, bloggers, cape town, dance, fashion, field guides, music, rock band, south africa, things to do, weekend in pictures, 0 Comments

Rocking the Daisies was wild! We loved checking out everyone’s outfits – here is some of what we saw. Note: short-shorts are this year’s festival must-have, as are a pair of boots of some kind plus colourful wayfarers. Colourful everything! Big thanks to Red Bull for having us - more about RTD 2010 to follow a bit later.

FCUK opens a YouTique

06 Oct 2010, Posted by Cape Town Girl in CTG recommends, Celebrity, fashion, field guides, girl stuff, 0 Comments

Stylist Louise Roe talks you through styling yourself for pretty much any occasion

FCUK have coined a very annoying new term but in the process they’ve also come up with a great idea - a Youtube Boutique that features a series of fashion and styling How Tos – the ‘YouTique’. We love this because:

- it’s useful, first and foremost. It’s not some lame moving lookbook that is actually just another fashion ad.

- it’s quick and easy to watch (we can hit the Youtique on our iPhones anywhere, anytime) and it covers the basics.

The FCUK covers a range of basic How Tos

More fashion labels need to tell people how to wear their clothes. What do you think?

Levi’s Loves Local

16 Jul 2010, Posted by Cape Town Girl in Celebrity, Design, advertising, fashion, field guides, food, non-tourist attractions, south africa, 0 Comments

CTG is quite enjoying this l’il summin summin for Levi’s® SA on facebook. They interviewed 5 local urban culture icons (Inge from Lark, Samora from 5th Floor, MTV’s Bianca, Jozi blogger True Jones and Pretoria photographer Liam Lynch) and created and designed maps of all their favourite hotspots in Jozi and Cape Town. You can print the maps off the facebook page and hit their unique versions of ‘town’. Is quite cool particularly for those who were here for World Cup and wanting something a little less touristy. Click here to check out all the maps – there are also video interviews and photos of the mentioned hotspots. What do you think? Cool? Yes? No? They’re also releasing clues on the facebook page that lead you to certain marked out venues where you can pick up free limited edition gear (Found that out on a Vide e Caffe cup).

What does it take to be a professional chick blogger?

23 Jun 2010, Posted by Cape Town Girl in CTG, bloggers, fashion, field guides, girl stuff, writing work, 40 Comments

I get a lot of questions about how I do what I do. Like, what kind of focus, dedication, strength is required to maintain such a fun, light-hearted and rad blog. When y’all see pictures of me lounging around in lingerie, eating my cuppiecakes, you probably envy me. I make it look so easy. Trust me, I train hard for this. In fact, writing a blog like CapeTownGirl requires a rigorous year-round training schedule. I will attempt to break down my processes, so you can empower yourself to achieve at this level too.

1. It takes a lot of solid dreaming.

When you look at this picture, what do you see? You see a whimsical lass, prancing around a sunny field, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. I see a girl who’s focused. At the top of her game. This girl is fully in her zone. She is dreaming, not only for herself. She is dreaming for you, too. All sorts of things are running through her mind right now. Deer. Teacup Chihuahuas. Lady Gaga’s new video. This girl has reached the point where she has almost become the dream – an important step in the journey towards becoming a chick blogger.

2. It takes knowing your  good side.

Looking good in photos is a skill – it can take years of practise to discover your Zone Pose. This is the point where your face comes together with your body to create a moment where you are one with your own hotness. But knowing your good side means knowing your bad side. You eat one too many cupcakes, and you could go to a dark place. The trick is to remember, you’re not alone. Focus. Go within yourself. Remember the dream. Remember the bambi. The chihuahuas. The cuppicakes. Use visualisations. One that works well for me is imagining myself puking up everything I just ate. This stops me from eating that extra cupcake in advance. But find your image. Do what works for you. Remember, this is a journey. YOUR journey.

3. Make sure you find yourself a friend who will take photos of you. And only you. Not them.

You can’t do this alone. You need support – and I’m talking real support. Get yourself a modelling coach. Get yourself a dietician. Get yourself a personal trainer. Get yourself a chick-blogging mentor (I’m happy to mentor you if you take plenty of pics of me). Most importantly, make friends with someone who has at least 2 Lomo cameras and an iPhone. Why all three? The Lomos are non-negotiable, since they will be flattering and abstract and instant hits. The iPhone because you can’t be seen with a BlackBerry pleb. While you need a friend to take pics of you – very badly – you certainly do not need to lower your social status. Be patient until you find the right person.

4. Take rest days. A lot is said in the silence.

As a professional chick blogger, you may find you want to push yourself. Maybe you want to push yourself a little too hard, to blog more, now, again. This is when you need to step back, and regroup. You need to refocus, and remember why you’re doing this (for free entrance to the hottest clubs in town). The truth is that sometimes not posting can be more powerful than posting. You really need to gauge this for yourself. You need to listen to your audience. What do they want? What are they saying about you behind your back? What are they not saying about you behind your back? (bitches) It is important to slow down for your own sanity. Tweet a little less about your daily @vidaecaffe. Twitpic self-portraits in mirrors even more less. Just take time out for your inner chick blogger to remember who she really is. This is not a race, remember. This is a lifestyle.

These may seem like extreme measures, but you’ve got to decide how badly you want this blogging thing. You have got to get your head right. It’s all in the mind. Either you are in this to win this (and other competitions that will benefit from your free blog-PR) or you are just another (f-ing) chick blogger with pretty pics you’ve stolen from other chick bloggers all over your site. Make up your mind. How badly do YOU want it?

Think about it.

xxCTG

Been practising CPR

18 May 2010, Posted by Cape Town Girl in advertising, fashion, field guides, 1 Comments

Just want to be a ’safer friend’, you know? Here’s a nifty little CPR instruction video I found to get me going. Is quite cool as they are also lounging around in lingerie. Do you think the girl who is receiving CPR choked on a cupcake?

Enjoy! Thanks Chris